Path
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Jaheira and Khalid are companions of the Bhaalspawn. Written for Yuletide 2010 for LokisRose. Khalid/Jaheira. ToB.
1. Rest

_Summary_: Jaheira and Khalid are companions of the Bhaalspawn. Khalid/Jaheira.

_Notes_: Written Yuletide 2010 for LokisRose. Liberties are taken with game events for the sake of the story.

_Warnings_: Romance between the two protagonists, of course, and the sort of violence present in the canon material. This story tries to base Khalid's Calishite heritage off Earth's Arabic peoples; corrections would be appreciated where I've made error.

—

**Chapter 1: Rest**

—

They were alone at last below the trees in the grove. Most would have thought it quiet and tranquil, but he had learned from her something of how to begin to listen to all the noises of the life within it: to hear the mating cries of distant owls, a rabbit's skittering within the undergrowth, the shifting of leaves and branches in the winds and the flight of pollen in the air, the soft croaking of frogs in the stream. Fireflies lit the grove with soft yellow light, and in that he could see his wife's beauty. The fierce planes of her face under infravision, the wild golden brown cloud of her hair, her bright grass-green eyes and the intense fire within them that had sealed his voice and his breath since the first moment he had seen her. Not that it was particularly difficult to seal his voice, he would have thought wryly; but this was not the season for such things...

"Khalid, come to me," Jaheira said, her voice heavy and low, the same words as the first time they had been together. It had been so long since they had a chance to be alone like this, so little privacy upon the winding roads and in their duties as Harpers; at first it was a hasty yielding to each other, garments shed like leaves on the grass, his back against the rough bark of an oak and their faces pressed together like ripe mushrooms yielding to the slightest force, wet and flowing like a stream. They found their way to the ground, though not to his cloak that he had draped down but instead fell into the cool sweet grass. His wife bit at his ear like a tigress, a bear; his arms tightened around the corded muscle of her back as if he would never, could never let go of her. He twisted as if they sparred, and then it was she who lay on the ground, the furnace of her heat wrapped around him and her hands clenching his shoulders like a panther's claws. Her voice was hoarse as an eagle; she nipped at his neck, her teeth slightly sharper than usual, her body shaped by her power. She pushed at him and they rolled on the ground together, thick strands of her hair falling into his face above him, against his mouth and inside it as he strove to find hers. Jaheira called out loudly above him, pressing his back into the ground, patterning the marks of grass and earth to it. Khalid held her, pushing back against her, hands travelling across her body and his legs wrapped tightly around her. She bent her head, her mouth laid over the most recent mark on his face. She gripped him with her teeth like a wolf gnawing ravenously on hunted prey, and like her he was relentless. Frantically they moved against each other, seeking everything they wanted; and then after that first reunion they fell into a more gentle pace, sliding over to his cloak. He sought to map each inch of her by his mouth, her splendour that had not changed but only grown more beautiful by the years. Tenderly she touched even the scars that marked the frame he thought of as awkward compared to her grace. In poems of his childhood he he had stuttered over but had learned by heart, her body like the golden first-born of the depths, her shining sharp-toothed mouth with a kiss sweet and pleasant of taste, _adbin muqabbaluhu ladidi lmatami_, no _hur_ of Sharess more beautiful than his beloved, _habibat_, none in this world nor any other able to match her wisdom of Silvanus and undefeatable spirit.

Jaheira lay warm above him, both of them sated enough to slow and lie against each other for some short while, replenishing vigour for another cycle. Sometimes she spoke that he could keep her pace, match and even overmatch her in effort of filling her desire. "Oft have I said 'twould take a sailor to untie that tongue, Khalid," she said, her eyes languorous and lidded, her body lazily shifting on his sweat-soaked skin. "'Twould be insufferable for me if such a one ever did."

The night was warm enough for them to lie comfortably naked, the grove deserted such that they were alone. "Jaheira, d-dearest—_ayuni_, my eyes—your eyes, so green as g-grass..." They were darker and moss-like in the heat of passion, a black-eyed gazelle with a lioness's claws.

"More than my eyes you looked at, Khalid," she said, the muscles of her shoulders and the swell of her breasts moving idly against him.

"I s-sought to compliment," he said, and kissed her triumphantly, which lasted for some time;

"Your silver tongue," Jaheira said, breathlessly, draped over him. "Khalid-of-my-heart, I have missed you so."

Ever a Harper's duties kept them upon the road; and still it seemed more troubling times were to come. But as long as they were together, her strength and courage and nature's power coursing and crackling through her hair and frame, his guarding of her, surely... "D-dearest," Khalid said firmly, and there was yet another long silence of speech.

"If it serves the Balance," Jaheira said after a while, one of her hands toying with his chest, curls of her hair tangled in his mouth.

Khalid carefully moved his head. "The c-children...s-sometimes you worry too much, d-dear. Gorion did his best."

Jaheira snorted like a mare. "Such a pair of misguided, immature infants I have never seen! Nor indeed those they ask to share their travel."

His hands kneaded her back like he had learned to train his hands for the longbow, maintain his weapons, to move away the knots with skill and care. "P-present company..."

Jaheira sighed comfortably, her hand moving up from nipple to tease the skin just below his neck. "A single wise decision, of course."

"It m-must end at some time. I do not t-think that Della wishes the road for an eternity..."

"And do you, Khalid?" Suddenly she rose, still mounted over him, her chest and head above him. "Do you wish to settle ourselves from it all? To try a home of our own? You would be a good father, and I know you would want it."

His hands had slipped to her hips, tanned and curved above their steel-strong muscle. "What we d-do is important. If we must put...other things...aside... Then know that home to me is always where you are, my love."

A faint smile lingered on her lips, wide and puffed from what they had done, the expanse of her breasts and torso above him like the image of a goddess of nature. "I chose you for your speech, Khalid. Of late I have thought of—this, at last—"

"And yet...you r-remember stopping Ployer and all his foulness..."

"He received far less than he deserved," Jaheira said with force; in their years with the Harpers they had done much against slavery. In his childhood Khalid had grieved for his mother, and in the years since then had seen far worse evils and abuses. Together with Jaheira to give him courage they had changed the world, made it better insofar as two people could try.

"Y-yes. I was...worried for you..."

"No less than I for you," his wife said firmly.

"And yet m-more than that," Khalid said, the sweat between their bodies starting to cool, Jaheira bending down to embrace him tightly. "Wherever...wherever G-gorion's daughter next travels..."

"Suldanessellar? The Nine Hells themselves? Odd planar spheres?" Her mouth widened into a broad smile, and feather-light her mouth lingered along his clear chin. "After hell, Khalid, I think there is little that could surprise us."

"We could...s-settle down in a grove." The forests of Suldanessellar thick around them drew from the glories of the Tree of Life they had helped to save, almost unblemished as nature; but this place belonged to the full-blooded elves. "Gulthmere, perhaps," he said, remembering the time of their wedding, some of the fondest memories they shared within that place. "Or Tethyr." Jaheira had grown to adulthood in a druid grove there; not all of her recollections of her homeland were ill ones, and there were said to be many half-elves in the country, growing across generations, prejudices against them fewer. "We would have the children you have d-dreamed of...a girl, as spirited and beautiful as her mother."

"And a boy as kind and as brave as his father." Jaheira affectionately tweaked his nose. "I am a druid; we have knowledge of these things."

"Or...the other children n-need us," Khalid sighed, shifting slightly the elbow on which she leaned to avoid his arm falling to sleep. "After all they have..."

One night in Beregost Gorion's ward Delythabelle had simply left them in the middle of the night, eloping with young Garrick, taking her sister. At the time Jaheira and Khalid's meditations had been that they could not force Gorion's ward to remain with them, and it was their duty as Harpers to continue to Nashkel... In the end Della and Imoen had returned to face Sarevok; left again with the pleasure-seeking companions of their choice; and kidnapped one night, so that the Harpers had not been able to find them until after their ordeal had passed and several of their friends had perished. There was guilt in not looking after Gorion's daughter as he had asked of them, though since Athkatla they had endured the long road to Irenicus by the side of the girls.

"Young fools," Jaheira sniffed; "though your countrywoman is old enough to know better, I believe."

The young bard yet remained with his love, a boy proven to be more than he had first appeared; and Safana, far more subdued than upon their first meeting, remained also, scarred and fighting after the death of her lover. Once Delythabelle was a frivolous girl who thought herself in love with a bard she had known a day; once Imoen a young prankster and occasional pickpocket; Garrick as flighty and innocent a lutist who ever laid hand to string; Safana a boldly-dressed woman the centre of a glittering circle of admirers at the ball of the Grand Dukes, chatting to Khalid in their first language until Jaheira had rescued him. "She...g-grieves for that elf still," Khalid said. "As we know of all that we have l-lost. Reviane. Dermin." He did not wish to speak the names of the Harpers they had fought for the sake of Gorion's child; a young girl foolish and helpless but almost incapable of malice.

"And if to brood on them would return them to the natural cycle of life, I should do so," Jaheira said; "but 'twill not occur." She shook her head; it was best to banish such thought for the brief time they had here. More had lived than had died from their actions, at least; Harpers still. "For the balance, Khalid. We remain to serve it."

"As you wish, my l-love. Shall we not...s-spend more time on other matters?" They brought themselves slowly together again, gently wrapped around each other; and in the grove of Suldanessellar there was almost a restful silence in the midst of the life that teemed within.


	2. Destruction

**Chapter 2: Destruction**

—

Saradush burned. In Gromnir's throneroom waited his chief warriors and mages and the unnaturally born half-orc himself.

"He is...n-not a fire giant," her Khalid tried to console their ward, "and the s-same as you; you should t-try to at l-least..."

Jaheira, iron-skinned, folded her arms with impatience. Already she had healed her husband from an enchanted arrow-wound in his left arm and a slash to his thigh, as well as the others who had absolutely insisted upon getting themselves injured. Her own wounds, of course, had been gained for definite purpose and 'twas easy to cast healing spells on oneself. The young bard walked with a slight limp; Imoen's purple cloak was ripped and singed; the hem of Delythabelle's robes was soaked by half-orc blood, which the child had complained of several times already in their slow, discreet push from the dungeon entrance to the uppermost rooms of the fortress of Gromnir Il-Khan. (The most natural way to remove bloodstains from cloth was by cold water and the acidic pemmonfruit.)

"All right, Khalid," Della said sweetly, and she and her simulacrum both enchanted their mirror images to invisibility. "Safana should be ready by now...shouldn't she?"

"I cannot doubt it," Garrick said, placing a hand on her elbow, his lute slung across his other arm.

Three skeleton warriors reared up beside them, carrying mage-summoned blades: at Imoen's command the bodies of Il-Khan's guards they had already slain had risen, the flesh sloughing from them by her spells, the bones joining together to make giants. Jaheira disapproved of necromantic spells, but helpful advice seemed to fly from Imoen as a duck cleaning mud from its feathers by a quick dive in the water. And yet Imoen kept something of her old cheer and charm, Jaheira thought; the second child she and Khalid were given duty to watch over, clever in her own way and optimistic. Of course, it was important that Imoen continued to take her very seriously. Khalid, her love though he was, did not always give the stern authority one needed to properly direct others on how to live a fulfilled and natural life.

Jaheira strode forward impatiently to push at the thick doors, but Imoen stepped by her;

"Strength spell!" she gloated, applying the tip of her fourth finger to them, and open they came.

_A typical unnatural archmage_, Jaheira thought with amused tolerance. She could recall that when she had first met Khalid she had still been in the stage of entangling anyone upon half an excuse to show her appreciation of the abilities Silvanus granted. With Khalid she took care to be first to enter, ready to ward the first attack.

The half-orc appeared a shambling, pathetic creature, one of those who gained mastery over others for simple bulk; in nature the successful leader of a pack was gifted in both cunning for survival and in defending a position. He was large for one of his ilk, sprawled upon a thronelike chair on his dais, the seat roughly carved out of oak. Not merely muscle showed in him, but fat threatened to spill from the armour he wore, his dark green jowls thick and floppy above his metal gorget. A pale blue morningstar was in his hand, and the cloth that showed between the armour was stained in several places. He rose quickly as if they had caught him unawares, the weapon in hand. Jaheira counted four soldiers and two robed figures by Il-Khan, three half-orcs and three human, though at least one of the humans seemed brutal enough of feature to have some of the foul blood within them—such as Madulf of the Umar Hills aside, there was reason to despise orc-kin.

Delythabelle chanted a brief spell, and her high voice rose to allow itself to be heard. "Brother Il-Khan! If you wish I would like to speak with you! We can help you with Saradush! All the little children...they must need our help..." Her young face was drawn in sorrow. Though shallow and frivolous and unlikely to work for balance without the impetus given her, Della was not unfeeling; the suffering on the streets had touched her to the point that Jaheira had used far too many healing incantations at her request.

"We could join together!" Garrick burst in, his tenor voice much richer than Della's tinkling. "We have to drive away the Fire Giants, we don't have to fight each other! You just need to look after this city..."

"Pretty Melissan sent you," the half-orc spoke; Jaheira, glaring at the two mages, readied herself. Dispelling and a true sight to breach illusions were ready upon her lips by Silvanus. "Do you not know how well she lies?"

Jaheira and Khalid shared a glance; the half-orc sounded as insane as a Zhentish necromancer. If the priestess was willing to aid even Bhaalspawn as girlish and frivolous as Della and Imoen, that in itself was something of a sign of good faith, and unlike Gromnir she seemed concerned about saving the city. Perhaps Melissan had been correct in diagnosing his madness.

"Melissan merely wants the best for Saradush and for the Children," Garrick said, his voice gathering a bard's confidence. "Come and listen to us; you and Della can work toget..."

"Kill all the intruders who lie!" Gromnir screamed—the voice like a wild pig, Jaheira thought, doubling her ability to fight with the right incantations to Silvanus already in her throat; and the battle started—

Safana's shadow jammed the blade of her dagger into Gromnir's neck, the invisibility spell and her own ability to blend to shadows fading away from her. There was dark blood, the half-orc's scream; but he moved to fling the thief away from him. Her body struck the opposite wall with a loud crash. There was no time to tend to her—a comrade, though not Jaheira's preferred company—only to rush to the warriors, take down Gromnir's defences. He bled though he'd the durability of his ilk.

A thick circle of spinning thorns sprung around Jaheira from her calling of the powers of Nature, and then she reached further to Silvanus to command them to be set afire by an elemental spirit, a burning shield. She dashed forth to a warrior bearing a sword, whilst her Khalid—

Her Khalid fought Gromnir himself, his bright blade and firm shield meeting the icy morningstar; she worried for him, but of course his fighting was focused and agile and it was best for her to face greater numbers of opponents. Her quarterstaff clove the head of the first arms-orc, though the two others surrounded her; and an archer's arrow tried to pierce through her thorned barrier. As she struck she sought to force the power of her shielding to harm them. There was time for mercy in Balance, and that was not this hour.

A lightning bolt lanced through her body. She shouted at the pain; iron protected better than bark against most attacks, but lightning was not one of them... There was a lucky strike from the axeman, through her thorns and into her body, though it bruised rather than pierced armour and nature's iron. Two of Imoen's skeletons came beside her, and the third made its shambling way to the archer.

"Della, help me get their protections down!" Imoen called. A long red whip of magical force uncoiled from her hands; she flung it at one of the enemy mages, and a pale sphere he had called about himself faded. Imoen started to chant a new spell, and beside her Garrick's bardsong rose from his voice and granted courage. Della was rushing over to Safana's body, a healing potion in her hands; kneeling, trying to force it down Safana's throat.

Jaheira fought her way once more to her feet. She swung her quarterstaff carefully _not_ in the rhythm of the bard's song, refusing to be influenced by it, obeying the tides and eddies of her own skill. The earth was far below, the stone walls were hauled and shaped away from nature by man, the throne upon the dais was of dead wood: those were still more reasons to fight. Her wooden staff flashed out again, the end firmly into the stomach of the second warrior and taking him down; then the first of Imoen's skeletons brought down its sword through his face.

There was ice on Khalid's shield and left shoulder, but Gromnir bled in one more place. Strong despite his bulk, obviously muscle under the fat; but not nearly so skilled as her Khalid, who avoided the fierce blows with quick, assured footwork. Della was chanting, still standing over Safana's body. The duplicates of her cast missiles.

White light shone from the girl's direction. Jaheira heard her cry out, and glanced back: "_Imoen! Behind you!_" Della screamed, and Imoen whirled; there was a dark-clad figure near the shadows by her, trying to stab in the back.

_The children were trained by now to deal with this_, Jaheira reminded herself; grimly she fought on.

One of the enemy mages called out to finish a spell; a flood of hobgoblins came out of a cloud of green smoke, three of them by her and the remainder by Khalid, some aiming their foul arrows at him, the repulsive poison that they drew from under their fingernails...

Jaheira hit to push back the warrior she fought, and reached inside herself for what she knew was there. She felt her body change, her plate moving and shifting and adapting, her bones growing and her hair covering her body entire, her teeth thick and long and almost pushing themselves through her mouth until her jaw shifted to cover them. Her quarterstaff fell from the bear's claws, and Jaheira leapt for their throats.

"I d-did... Dearest, I was in no real d-danger..." She bent over her husband, having cast multiple healing spells. Gromnir Il-Khan lay pierced by Khalid's longsword; hobgoblin bodies began to melt into thin air as summoned creatures. Shattered bones of Imoen's skeleton warriors lay also still.

"Be quiet, Khalid," she thought she said, and stroked his face gently.

"C-could...you perhaps t-turn back into y-yourself, dear? Not that I...disapprove of any shape that you choose..."

Her claws and fur began to retreat from the bear that cradled her husband. That woman Melissan had come, arrived only too late; talking to the children.

"They all lie dead," Garrick said with bitterness. An expression of sadness lingered upon the red-haired woman's features.

"What I feared came to pass. It was too late to save Gromnir from his madness," Melissan said. "But you must go on, if you would aid others..."

"What is there to aid?" Garrick pointed to the empty window set in the wall, the city below like black barren glass suffused by smoke, the shapes of people fleeing like ants.

"Yaga-Shura," Melissan said. "Would that bloodshed had been avoided here; if you journey to the Northern Forests, you may find what is vulnerable of him..."

_For the balance_, Jaheira thought, and looked into Khalid's eyes, the liquid brown the colour of a still lake by the roots of a willow, the healing sap of the thorns of the joryith plant that flowered for only three days of the year; she could see the reply of his heart. _We must do what we can, beloved._

—


	3. Heart

**Chapter 3: Heart**

—

"He separated heart from body," Garrick narrated, as though he already crafted their journey into a song. The young had to find their own way of living through this madness; Khalid listened to him. "What is a man—a person—without a heart? The seat of emotion and of love true..."

Glancing into Jaheira's eyes, Khalid thought he saw amusement: —_What do those young pups know of love! —Dearest, I believe that they are as much in love as you and I...you remember that time past, when we were still learning what we felt for each other..._

Delythabelle took her lover's hand in hers. The trees of the Forest of Mir were close together, the ground oddly dry for the amount of reddened foliage above it; Khalid felt no sense of the warm welcome of nature in this place, and knew that for his wife it was a worse thing. _It is not as troublesome as entering man-made cities, dear_, he read from her face_._

"I wouldn't go without my heart," Imoen said. "Sure, it's just the thing that pumps blood 'round your body, but there's no way I'd sign up for taking it out like some lich or something. Heh, remember the Nether Scroll fiasco?"

Their chatter had an edge of discordance to it in this place, where they walked on in quest of the danger that guarded the heart of Yaga-Shura. Khalid raised a gloved hand to touch a leaf, and felt it stiff as if made of some light metal rather than a natural substance. The colour was of an autumn that should not be at this season, something slightly wrong about the shade: a dark red that hinted at flames.

"It is...affected by that which it holds," Jaheira said. "Pay it no heed, Khalid."

_Nyalee welcomes you! Nyalee will tell you all...tell you of fireheart locked in an egg like all the old stories tell of it, tell you in a needle in an egg in a bird in a red fox in a chest in the tree for the dead in the forest of upbringing gone all fire! With nasty things, yes, nasty things Nyalee can't tell, find the fireheart and bring it here..._ What the woman who called herself a witch had told them had to be right; if this was a false chase then behind them innocents died. But Jaheira believed that the truth was spoken.

"Everyone has weakness, foolishness is one," Safana said in her roughened voice, her throat hoarse and scarred. Jaheira had been unable to heal the old injuries, nor the lines that ran down her face. She was lonely.

"But you should not hide your heart away, Safana," Della said in her thin high voice. She wore ribbons in her hair, even today, sweeping her cherrywood-coloured hair away from her half-pointed ears with pale pink. "You cared about..."

"I never had a heart for that silly elf," Safana said, raising her slim nose in the air in a gesture only an imitation of the arrogant confidence Khalid had seen of her at their first meeting. "I wanted to tell him I never meant half the things I said, that was all. And listen to me, you silly girl, pay more attention." She pointed across at a part of the ground; Della placed a foot cautiously into the leaves—and found only a pit in disguise.

"Trapped on purpose, d' you think?" Imoen said. She cleared the leaves from it with her hands rather than a cantrip, bending down. "These sides are really smooth."

The earth was a dark but dry brown that seemed to easily crumble when touched, as if it was halfway dead. Jaheira frowned at it and shook her head. "Waste no time, children."

A long day. The three youngest grew weary, but travelled on; the trees were ever thicker, the earth on the ground ever more smooth, as if it began to form strange steps below them. Something rustled through the reddened leaves, yet there was no breeze felt upon their faces.

"Mir is the name for the world in the old language of Tethyr," Jaheira said. "It can also mean peace." Khalid searched his wife's features for a trace of wistfulness, but saw only her strong determination for the time being. He stepped closer to her as she marked the trail for them all to follow.

"There is a t-tale I remember from a child," Khalid said, "about a p-people who worshipped giants of living flames. Like f-fire elementals, like the sun. And a p-princess Azar who braved them and the p-power of the _israq_, the radiance of the sun that turns those who look upon it to black s-stone. She feigned death so they would not see her and came to their palace by night, where there was a t-throne of gold and diamonds the size of ostrich's eggs. While the wicked k-king of them slept at night she took a key and unlocked the egg of his heart, and turned all back to living people again..." It had been a longer story when he was younger. He felt he had spoken too long, tongue-tied as he was; it was the strangeness of this place that made him speak. Azar: the sun was setting, and lit Jaheira's hair to turn it to fire in its own right. She was more than any fabled heroine. "I t-think of her as l-like you, dearest," he said to his wife. She could not have been stronger, or sweeter, though Jaheira hid it behind fierce courage.

"I remember," Safana said, likewise born of the southern lands, and half-smiled lazily. "Did she not save her black stone fiance, the prince of the caliphate, from his durance? And did he not then wish to see her dead in turn, for betrayal?"

"But Azar was n-not guilty," Khalid corrected her. "She did no harm."

"Only to go to what ought to have been left alone," Safana said. "One runs out of new things to try, after a while." There was nothing he could do for her but to watch with sympathy; she was of the group. His wife moved to stand on his other side, her fingers brushing briefly hot across his arm.

"I think we should go _that _way." Della pointed petulantly to the west, lifting a small foot as if she wanted to stamp it. "It's supposed to be ground of Bhaal. It's getting dark and I'm tired. How are you?"

"I'd be gettin' a little sleepy if it weren't so creepy," Imoen said. "No animal attacks or humanoids: what's up with that, Jah?"

"Unnatural, of course," his wife said in clipped tones. "Let us follow where the Bhaalspawn lead, if we must."

They wandered; even after darkness had fallen they did not wish to stop, the unspoken decision of all to refuse to camp in this strange forest. Della did not find the temple as easily as she hoped, nor Imoen, but when they drew close it was unmistakable. Glowing a soft gold even at night, the same colour as the feverish look in Della's or Imoen's eyes when they were angered or using a greatly powerful ability, replacing one sister's dark blue and the other's light green. A domelike structure, and marked by steps of that same dry dead earth smoothed to flatness, though here it shone the same yellow. A temple.

"A blight on the landscape," Jaheira said slowly. "I would see it destroyed."

"Do you s-sense much of it?" Khalid said. Clouds of silvery fog had drifted upon them, almost without their notice, surrounding the branches of the thick trees and lit by the yellow moon above. It was like an open eye that stared down upon them; Khalid shivered. He still much preferred the daylight.

"The same unnature. Ready your weapons," Jaheira ordered. "Foul undead, perhaps. I smell little but we must be prepared."

Nothing stirred upon the yellow steps. Safana drew her twin shortswords with unobtrusive swiftness, the Cutthroat and the Drinker; Garrick his roseblade, Imoen and Della spell components. Khalid readied his hand on his own longsword, one with a light of its own to cast against enemies they must put to death a second time. Jaheira began a casting for Silvanus' blessings, her tone low and sober. Khalid felt the familiar joy of her giftings rush into him.

They set foot to the yellow steps, and at first nothing at all happened. The fog drifted around them, yellowing in the weird half-light. Garrick's and Imoen's eyes were white with the spell for night vision; Safana too stepped easily enough in the twilight.

"Dead monsters to guard a dead heart," she whispered, "such a relief if life and fairytale are one."

Khalid held the green thread of Jaheira's spell within his heart, as if if could preserve against all ills: it did so for ills that mattered. _What is sent to guard the heart of a fire giant? And to guard the joys of our own hearts..._

He could never be sure of the moment when the fog first began to drift into shapes recognisable. When he and Jaheira had travelled through Cormyr's forests for the first time, there was a day they walked through heavy mist and could not resist pointing out shapes to each other in still-newlywed amusement: _A deer is in the top of that tree, a squirrel the size of a horse is by the stream, a turbaned merchant is by the path; over there I see a...it looks like a..._ Laughter, then. _My heart is not hidden but stands courageous beside me._ Jaheira stepped evenly through tendrils that seemed to linger by her face much longer than he would have liked. Nothing stirred within the yellow dome that stood as the temple's centre. It felt as if the number of steps had somehow increased since they had begun to set foot upon them, yet they had not seen the landscape change and alter itself. There seemed as great a distance to the dome as before. Khalid glanced quickly behind and saw the steps still in their sickly yellow, plain earth smooth and unmarked by their footfalls.

Something moved, perhaps. Della gave a start; Khalid looked quickly at the mist, but saw nothing but the moonlit streams of it, formless and void. She bit her lip; "I'm probably just scared," she whispered to herself. An understandable concern, and he placed a friendly hand briefly on their ward's shoulder.

Again a movement in the mist that caught the eye—a shape, a hand, a sleeved hand reaching? It was Khalid's turn to jump, but again it was only the fog. Anticipation, he knew; the old Bhaal temple probably was designed to make anyone uneasy. They would at some point meet a physical force that guarded the heart, and that he could try to fight against.

Imoen muttered a spell to herself, carefully watching, her eyes narrowed. "'S just _depressing_," she said, more or less to herself; "why didn't ol' Bhaal like to put his temples nicer places?"

He'd looked across at Imoen when she had spoken. Naturally, he told himself, he simply hadn't seen in the right direction. There it was at last, as if it had stood there all along waiting for their appearance and for them to finally look.

"—_Daddy_—" Della almost shrieked, her hands over her mouth;

"Ol' Mr G.—" Imoen was more irreverent, but no less shocked. Their old friend: with Jaheira he saw him, the familiar height and grey cloak, beard and deep-set eyes; and wounded exactly as he had been by that sword on that night as they had gone with the children to see the body properly buried, his face stiff as it had been, marks of the predators that had been first to find the body. The Harper pin on his breast as he and Jaheira had placed him for burial.

_The rescue of pasha Nazir's slaves out of the hold of the Golden Storm, the time we went through Waterdeep with him, the time we battled the great red dragon and his spellshield saved us both, a hundred old adventures with our true friend—_

"Gorion? Gorion! How..." Khalid stammered out, unable to help himself.

The wraith's cold eyes affixed them all. Jaheira said nothing, but stepped back in her shock. It spoke, and its voice had the timbre of what they remembered in life, though an undefinable coldness clung to it. "_So you remember me._"

"You are unnatural!" Jaheira said swiftly; but she did not attack, her quarterstaff remaining at her side.

"I am surprised to know that. Have you forgotten all that I taught you...my ward?"

"_Daddy_," Della repeated the affectionate nickname, pale-faced. "I haven't forgotten! I love you..."

The form of Gorion smiled, gauntly, with none of the friendship Khalid could remember from his life. "Have you forgotten what your love did to me?" it said, and gestured to the vast wound in its side.

"No! Yes, but no! It wasn't my fault!" Della held her hands to her face in guilt. "I was frightened! I didn't do anything!"

"That is why you have failed to learn," the wraith continued, implacably. "I tried to guide you from your destiny. But instead you do nothing, and blood is left in your wake."

"_You_ died. And Garrick was in a cage..." Della said, floundering. "We just wanted to travel and find pretty things and enjoy ourselves. I never asked for _anything_!"

A second figure: a tall elf with bold face-paint in purple, his hair fair and his pose easily confident, a bow slung over his back. "You killed me," he said, and this time it was Safana to take a chilled step back, her light brown face turned pale. His name had been _Coran_, Khalid knew, another of Della's and Imoen's old companions. He had died at the hands of that sorcerer. His body was marked as if he had been cut to pieces and stitched together again with black thread; Khalid had known something of the ordeal the companions had come through... "I lie dead because of you. And not even a word of kindness from your lips to sustain me upon the journey." The wraith drifted close to Safana, whose eyes were wide as lamplights. "Was I ever in your heart, woman?"

There was nowhere for Safana to go, the steps broad and an open space; she stumbled when she stepped back again. "You...have all the appeal of a rutting owlbear," she whispered, as if it were a line memorised. "No! No, I didn't mean it, I meant none of it."

"You slay me," the ghost repeated, and Della drew away from it also. "A kiss to send me on my way?" It floated—no, it walked as a living person—closer to her; Khalid drew his sword, but a moment later Safana's own blades were hooked in its flesh, dissecting it on the same lines Irenicus had cut...

"Safana, I _killed him once_," Della said, despairingly high. Khalid could not think clearly: Jaheira stood still and stared at Gorion's form, Imoen and Garrick quiet and watching, himself panicked and feverish at the dead.

"You did," the shade of Gorion snapped even as the elf fell to the ground. "Jaheira, old friend, what happened to your responsibility? She is a helpless fool, you let her wander alone, without you she and her friends were taken by this sorcerer, now she leaves ever more bodies in her wake..."

"We could not have stopped Irenicus by ourselves," his wife hissed at the form of their old friend, trying to defend their actions. "She refused our guidance, we could do nothing..."

"And what my wards are now shows the power of your guidance!" Gorion's voice spoke. "You despise their weakness yourself!"

"G-gorion would never have said such things!" Khalid stepped forward, and rammed bright Daystar to the wraith's form. "H-her father and our f-friend! Never!"

The sword ripped into the wraith's grey mantle; Khalid could feel something parting before him, some form of strange flesh this creature owned. And he heard Imoen speaking softly:

"Maybe he's right. I did fail to learn magic in time..."

The form of a half-elven woman materialised next in the fog; clad in brown leathers, the loose dark tail of her hair behind her like a fox's bristling brush, her broad pleasant face scarred by battle. "Traitors," she spoke to him. "False Harpers. Murderers."

_Reviane. Jaheira's handmaid at our wedding under Gulthmere trees in the spring. We did not seek her death_, Khalid thought, the blood freezing in his veins; but that was only an excuse, they had caused the death of her and Dermin and Galvarey and all the others. Harpers who slew Harpers.

"The guilt remains with the Spawn." Reviane's finger pointed at Della and Imoen. "They are the cause of all bloodshed."

Della's defence was a hysterical and repeated _I never meant, I never meant. _Khalid knew what Jaheira would think of that, little enough, but they both protected the girl and Imoen, willing to fight to save their lives...

"G-go, Reviane," he said, and raised the weapon. Jaheira's face was stone, refusing to shed tears.

Safana finished her task, cutting more than she should have to the wraith. "You were heartless after all, Coran!" she spoke in her hoarse voice. "As heartless as I who dealt with you! Let them all _come_!"

And as if in response to her cry—three figures who stood together. Elven, half-elf, and a human woman with long silvery hair.

"Khalid, I would never have wanted you to fight and kill."

"Jaheira, daughter, I wished you to be raised better than this."

"My little Garrick, did you ever think of me after you saw me die?"

His mother he remembered from long ago, singing the songs of her people to him rather than the Calishite lullabies of the other concubines of his father. Even the lily fragrance of her seemed to linger in the mists, the smooth burnished curtain of her hair falling behind her, her dark blue eyes kind and sad as he remembered them. He did not recognise the half-elf man in rich clothing; he was dead, Jaheira's family had perished a long time before, as she had once told him he wore a thick golden chain around his neck with an elaborate statuette of a wolf hanging from it that a little girl had liked to play with... The white-haired woman was only half a memory to him, not a strong recollection. It was too great a burden not to look upon the mother he had lost.

"_Otets_," Jaheira said limply, a Tethyrian word; Khalid did not trust himself to speak to his mother—the image of her, it must be. She had gone to the elven _jannah_ almost a human lifetime ago, Arvandor she had spoken of, someone as kind and beautiful as her could not have failed to reach that place...

"I do not believe you were right," Jaheira said in Safana's direction, her voice not quite steady. "We must steel ourselves against apparitions. For unnatural apparitions they are."

"You know I tell the truth, little wolflingmine," Jaheira's father said, and her face drew more adamantine at the endearment, though she made no move against the shade. His face was hers, his hair the alike colour; undoubtedly her kin. "The life of a wandering druid is below you. Act as if you have the noble life we sought to give you. Nobler than Bhaalspawn and slaves' get!"

"Khalid—" Jaheira looked to him; he could only hope that his wishes could aid her pain. "I was druid when we met, I have no family left." It mattered not, of course; these were ghosts. But if he could go to his mother one last time; so long ago but too young dead of heartbreak...

Garrick spoke. "You were an evil witch, Silke," he said, though his voice faltered.

"'Tis very easy to call people evil witches and murder them for it," the human woman said; her voice was full and well-trained. "Or is it worse not to be strong enough? You betrayed your new companion many times; _brave Sir Garrick_ runs away. Always runs away."

Khalid could hear no responses to that. They had to act; they were paralysed by the words of the spirits. He wanted to hear more of what his mother spoke—words in elvish, _darling Khalid come to me again and stop doing wrong_—and yet—

"Fight them, _moghaffal_, fool," Safana said, charging first to Garrick's shade, that which was least connected to those who drew it.

Imoen was chanting and missiles flew through the air; Khalid felt his eyes close as he lunged forward with his sword, not willing to see for the last time. Something inside him died as he lunged to place his sword through his mother.

A tree red as flame grew with a cypress-wood chest in its branches. It was Della who walked to it, pried open the lock with her hands though splinters passed through her soft fingers; and inside the chest waited a fox with bright fur. He saw Della raise a mage's dagger and bring it down, slitting through the fur. And where the fox's heart should have been lay a golden bird, singing. The bird laid an egg; the egg held a long black needle with an eye that beat; and the beating eye was the beating heart of Yaga-Shura. The tree was in a yellow place of light below a dome, and the walls could not be seen.

They were far from the temple once more when they began to speak again.

"Who but wraiths could guard this?" Della said, her hand upon the container in which she had sealed the object. "I feel pain in my chest." It lay heavy, like a stone weight upon all of them. Garrick moved to Della, who allowed him to place his arm around her; and Jaheira stood more closely to her husband. Imoen came close to her sister's other side.

"Weakness," Jaheira said; and oddly her disdain seemed turned upon herself.

"S-strength," Khalid corrected. "Will you be s-summoning water elementals now, Jaheira?"

"He will be drenched until death," promised Jaheira, and they went on the path to Yaga-Shura the Fire Giant.

—


	4. Creed

**Chapter 4: Creed**

—

The black warren trapped them by unnatural labyrinth. Once it had been all dark green moss rather than this foulness. Jaheira battled a horde of statues come-to-life, black stone as Khalid's—

She had thought herself strong but Gorion and Reviane and Otets, father she had called always by formal name but no less love for him until that day of fires and hiding so long ago now, they had made her wish for heartlessness and it was Khalid's action that had saved—

Her vines grown from scattered seeds, so thick with thorns as to be sharp as morningstars, swept and strangled and pierced the stone.

She was strong. Her prayers to Silvanus rung rich with green blessing, everything she shaped herself to be, fierce druid and doubly protective wife, guardian of the foolish children even though they failed to listen so many times, they might be foolish but still deserved protection.

Seeds of living flame were gifted to her hand, and Jaheira flung these in the face of an enemy who sought her dead.

The truth was that Khalid was her right hand, her left hand, her legs that bore her up, and the truth was that the whole of the two of them was greater than the simple sum of druid and warrior Harper. The truth was that Yaga-Shura lay dead of water-poisoning upon his fiery-maned head, and the truth was that through Melissan they found the lair of yet another Bhaalspawn in need of slaying before she spread further evil from her power.

She held her quarterstaff with only one hand, and an iron-skinned punch with the other sent one of the black statues flying whilst she lashed about her with the staff's length.

The truth was that Sendai needed _to feed the Earth and serve the balance._

Jaheira forced her way through the last of the black statues about her and to the drow herself. Sendai was pierced and tattooed, clad in grey, her weaponry two sets of long curved claws slipped over each hand, the metal seemingly planted painfully inside her flesh and dripping a liquid coloured blackish green. Renegade, for a drow: and what that turned out to be was still worse than the spider goddess. Still worse than the dark worship of that other renegade drow.

Talonite.

Jaheira ran forward, hoping to split her skull. The claws of the drow's right hand lashed out, twisted; strength she had not expected from the short and frail-built abominable worshipper of the Mother of All Plagues. Jaheira rebuked herself that of course even a caster of that nature could make themselves strong as a giant—she wrenched away her staff and more cautiously attacked. The claws of Sendai's left arm slid across the iron flesh of her upper arm. _Quick but unable to harm_, Jaheira thought; but then she knew that to be wrong, for some poison upon them ate through even the metal of her arms, designed to attack the very hidden parts of one, no doubt foul arcane as well as the work of that goddess.

She pronounced the words of her spell against poison, and Silvanus came to her aid. A powerful purification was needed, and speedily pronounced; it took some of her strength but much yet remained to her. In the same moment, Sendai raised a green sphere about herself, and her unnatural mouth chanted the words of another casting. Jaheira brought down her staff upon the shielding, again and again: she could not allow that. The words of the chanting faltered when the surface blistered: Talonites who pierced and poisoned and stunted themselves were foolish in their crimes against nature.

She heard a quick squeal from Della; a drow archer or mage must have aimed through, she supposed, for the girls and the bard cast next to each other, summoning creatures to draw the attacks. Hobgoblins and skeletal warriors and a pair of _horses_ from Della of all things, slender high-stepping white-maned animals that were inevitably massacred. Perhaps she ought not to condemn the girl too far, for in her claim to be an illusionist Della had concealed them all by layers of invisibility impenetrable enough to reach Sendai's inmost sanctum, though Jaheira doubted her dedication to a genuine mage's speciality.

Jaheira's staff drove through the shielding even as Sendai started her casting again, and hit the drow's ribs. Sendai's hoarse shriek was crow-like, less natural than the cry of any carrion bird—for carrion was indeed what she ought to be.

"_I will triumph_," Jaheira heard the drow whisper, "_you think me less natural than the little mongrel_?"

She was a Talonite. It was very simple, and deserved no reply.

"_Die in your delusions, lorugvith'rell,"_ Sendai spoke. Foul language; that she had natural relations with trees.

To talk was the response of an amateur; Jaheira chose only to fight. Her staff hit again, and this time the small-boned drow fell to her blackened stone. How pathetic. And yet there was a sharp pain in her side, something that pierced her protections. She whirled, her staff striking out again; a black statue in motion that had been invisible, bearing a long stiletto that glimmered a strange shade. Poison, yet again. Jaheira struck with the strength that remained to her, and flung the statue to where Khalid fought. He knew her as well as she knew him; his sword reached out and impaled it while it was yet in motion, and as easily he returned to fight a set of three casters. She lowered her hands to her wound and spoke again her quick poison incantation while his sword wove its graceful tapestry, setting spellcasters to stuttering more than he at his least collected.

Silvanus' gift cleared the contamination from her veins. She saw Safana fling a throwing dagger at Sendai, saw the drow dodge. The thief was running from Sendai's servants, taking shelter behind Jaheira's husband. Jaheira readied herself to end the Talonite, let this battle be over so quickly. She brought the drow to the ground with her first blow.

Sendai hissed; and this time her casting did not take long. A roiling cloud erupted from where the drow's body lay, and forced Jaheira back. She could easily cast to purify the air about herself, and did so by Silvanus' name; but within that cloud something stretched and reformed itself, to giant...

A scorpion, nigh the size of Yaga-Shura. Poison creature of the desert, a barbed tail, pincers unnaturally black and writhing... No. Four scorpions. It split itself upon a mass at the base of its tail, one almost the size it had first appeared, three simply the size of large basilisks. Jaheira chanted a summons of her own: she could call nature herself to this place, to protect them all.

They were high in the Talonite's lair. None but stone long soaked by poison and cursed to the mistress of disease surrounded them. This was no place of Silvanus. Jaheira spoke the familiar words to call animals to aid her, and none were there: she found nothing. In her brief moment of confusion, a tail of a scorpion struck down: pain through her shoulder and chest, black fire that drove all out of her head and made her feel only pain. Her knees gave way and the stone hit her forehead.

"J-Jaheira! _No!_" she heard Khalid's cry in the darkness, and that gave her what she needed to continue. _Silvanus, drain this poison from me to the earth. Silvanus, allow me to fight._

The only way to protect nature was to take an active role in the world, Jaheira had always believed, and the Oak Father had granted her prayers. Yet this place hurt her; there was difficulty in drawing the power to her, as if she sought to drink water through a broken reed. And the scorpion's poison was strong. Jaheira gathered it up from her heart, thrust it back through her veins; let the ground take it. She flung the blackness away and sought to close the wounds.

_You may take no more power to neutralise against poison_, she knew suddenly, though Silvanus' voice was not as clear as to give words. She had exhausted her abilities; other castings remained in her head, but Sendai's poisons were too violent for her to further...

Which meant that she must cause these creatures to fall. A squad of Imoen's hobgoblins already surrounded the one of the scorpions, firing arrows into its armoured hide, grimly organised with more summoned from the planes to take the place of those already dead by its strikes. They'd thought her dead and done for; but Jaheira had protections remaining to her casting strength, seeds in her pouches by her side. First she renewed skin of iron and bear's strength, panther's swiftness and wolf's natural fury. Then she took her grass seeds in hand, and flung at the scorpion closest to her: and cast.

_Silvanus bring nature to this place, since I have fetched it!_

The vines sprang to her command. They took the scorpion's legs, entangled its pincers: bound it and strangled the joints of its neck. Khalid she saw standing among the fallen mages, as if he had suddenly killed all in front of him to try to reach her: he took his longbow from his back, and she saw him aim at joints upon the head by the eyes of the giant scorpion. He knew such creatures better than she, from his homeland; it was the clear natural vulnerability... Jaheira gestured, and the vines no longer imprisoned only but sought to kill. The thorns pierced one of the eyes of the creature she held, and its pincers and tail writhed in what must be pain. (Pain to a Talonite. They had unnatural tastes for it.)

Garrick's voice sung with frantic urgency. Jaheira grasped her staff herself, and rushed to assist: the casters were almost unprotected, their shieldings worn away and their summonings slain, and the scorpion by them. She saw its black sting swoop down; she would be too late. Della was trying to run, but the blade on the edge of the scorpion's tail would find her, slit her throat by its poison. This she could not allow, for _Gorion_—

It was Garrick who thrust himself in front of the girl, as if to take the blow for her: pale and frightened, but his voice grew stronger. And as Jaheira reached it, something took hold: pale lines appearing between the sleek black of the sting, cracks running up and through it like lines of white smoke, a drill of song racing inside the beast and shattering from the inside out. She saw Garrick sink to his knees, but the scorpion fell apart in pieces. Then Safana fell to the ground, cut badly by the stinger of the scorpion of Sendai, and Jaheira knew her duties. A summoned kobold rushed in front of Safana as a brief distraction for the thing; Jaheira bent down hastily, and chanted enough of a healing spell to preserve flesh—but the poison, she needed to block the poison from the woman somehow. Jaheira cast, and sought for the way for this.

The poison beat through Safana's riddled flesh, and no matter what she thought of the woman she must aid her. She prayed to Silvanus for strength, the Talonite, the unnatural scorpion who sought to poison her Khalid as well, that they would heal... Upon Safana's belt were potions of antidote; Jaheira poured one upon the scorpion's bite and finished the chant of the basic healing spell. Safana was weak, but there was no time and she could heal the woman after the battle. Was there more she could do? She was separated from Silvanus by these foul environs. It must be his will to destroy the Talonite enclave, not for any Bhaalspawn but for that alone. She and Khalid had seen this place when dark green moss rather than this foul stone had triumphed, where it had been true nature rather than poisoned mockery only ten years before. Melissan had shown them the way to eradicate this abomination, and for that at least she appreciated the woman's warnings. The giant scorpion that was Sendai flanked her with its smaller child, and she could read in its eyes: _No mercy, druid. You and I would have this fight if there were none other than us._

"For the fallen!" Jaheira called her battlecry. _For all the life you have destroyed here, Sendai! For the others gone before their natural! For Gorion, for Dermin, for Reviane and Lord Firecam! _She brought her staff to one of the legs of the scorpion before her. Its body was thick; missiles of the spellcasters merely scorched its hide, Khalid's arrows only enraging it. He fired one shot into the eye of the giant one. It reared and bucked, and Jaheira rolled down and away from that stinger. She should not be trapped between two of them; at least her own vines held the other for the moment. Safana lay unmoving; Garrick was silent.

Khalid laid down the bow and came with his sword and shield. Light encompassed him, his own warm purple-yellow aura covering him like a blanket from the shield's powers of protection. He sliced into the smaller scorpion, and Jaheira used her staff to brace against the wild-swinging tail. At least its ferocious movements cleared the way from the statues that remained. She and her husband fought next to each other, the way they had in a thousand battles; not even a Talonite's grotesque form could separate them now. Khalid defended, attacking only when he saw a clear path to a vulnerability; Jaheira fought with less discrimination, forcing the foes away from them.

_Silvanus, come to me_, she prayed; _Silvanus, where is the nature in this place?_

She caught the glance of her Khalid, looking at her as if he expected her to act as a druid. The form of the third scorpion broke free from its vines, ripping free of them when they could not have possibly have been rooted to stone. Nature was not in this place. It came quickly, too quickly; her Khalid flung himself at her back to protect her, and the stinger ripped the shield from his hands. He did not falter but stabbed forward, his body in motion that distracted the foes and sought the precise place of their weakness.

_Silvanus._ Imoen's castings sought to bring the creatures to magical vulnerability; Della cast for her pair of prancing horses once more to stand in front of her. _It is not arcane that will destroy this Talonite_—

Jaheira and Khalid stood side by side and fought against the three scorpions that surrounded them, and it was impossible to tell which of them was slightly slowed, which of them whom after both their woundings was not quite as fast as the other anticipated, not quite within the rhythm they both knew as the beat of their hearts. The pincers of the giant scorpion cut across Khalid's armour, ripping plate to shreds; and then the stinger of one of the smaller pierced his flesh.

_Silvanus_— She had no _time_ to cast a proper healing spell—the poison—

_Silvanus! Oak Father do not fail me now!_ It was irreverent to address a god so, but: _Silvanus you will heed me and aid my husband now!_

Jaheira found the answer she sought. All places belonged to nature. The Talonite was nothing to begin with.

There was stone all around her, and she chanted to rouse it. Silvanus rose in her and she knew it to be right, to be natural: stone was untainted at its heart, poison broke against stone. She drew the stone to herself and to Khalid as armour, forced the poison in him to seek stone rather than flesh, and to there dissolve itself far more quickly than it could wear away the rock of Silvanus. She did the work of the Oak Father, she knew beyond a doubt with the chantings that she was granted. The scorpion tails struck, but they could not pierce the rocks themselves.

"_Fall, creature, and feed the earth!_" she cried to the Talonite, and brought Sendai's own crude statues to rise against her. All rock was Silvanus': she released it from the unnatural purpose. The stones from the very roof fell upon the scorpions, and above them was the open sky at last. Jaheira made herself the centre of a hurricane, the force of a driving wind, calm within the storm of stone: Silvanus aided her to reclaim. Nature took the life she gave.

The drow was returned to her natural form, crushed, a piece of rock driven through her forehead and her eyes staring up at nothing; and she crumbled to dust, her creatures dead with her. Jaheira looked up at a starry night, the moon the pale blue of seafoam.

"You've d-done it, dear," Khalid said, looking up at her where the stone she had pulled around him left his eyes visible; and first she healed him before taking care of Safana and the young ones.

—


	5. Strength

**Chapter 5: Strength**

—

They walked through the heat of the dry lands, the sun an hour past noontide. Khalid watched the children for heatstroke; they were not accustomed to nature in the way of he and Jaheira, nor Calishite-born and accustomed to such conditions as he and Safana. The earth grew surface-dry and yellow, not by cause of the Bhaalspawn wars; desert had flourished here for thousands of years. They sought the allies Melissan had promised, a group of mercenaries and monks of Amkethran upon the other side of this desert. Nonetheless not all of the dry barrenness was natural; on the previous evening they had passed by burned trees and a vast distant tower, and had taken care to camp quietly and below cover when they could not continue to walk any longer.

_A Bhaalspawn dragon; and his son and his allies..._

They had fought the Shade's dragon, and settled the old score with Firkraag, and aided the elves with Irenicus' dragon ally. But he doubted they could face this one upon their own; when they had fought Yaga-Shura and his army, forces from the Radiant Heart and Queen Zaranda had battled alongside them. They could find their way into strongholds, but surely not a Bhaalspawn drag... He would that the children lived through this. There was no point in foolhardy actions, though it was far better that the scorpion's bite had found him rather than Jaheira. To gather fellow warriors, before they faced the remaining two of the Five. If Abazigal was a dragon; then what would the last be? A pit fiend? A demigod of the Nine Hells themselves? Khalid looked to his wife's calm strength. As benevolent as Melissan seemed, it was unfortunate that they had faced so many dangers upon her information.

A shadow passed high above them, and he saw no cloud in the sky. A...blue dragon. The girth of Sendai's lair. Wingspan vast and face horned and heavy, stinking of electricity and sand even from the distance it was, from the beat of its wings that held them where they were, pressed them toward the ground. Abazigal landed, and it was an earthquake.

"_KINSLAYER_!" it screamed, and the wingbeat thrust across sand that scoured their faces. Khalid drew his sword, toothpick though it was against such an enemy; Jaheira grunted as her mouth filled with sand, but she held her own weapon. Della cried out, and only Safana seemed calm, her swords in hand though she knelt upon the ground.

_Blue dragon...If I could make it possible for them to get away, then they _must_—_

"Inferior mongrel!" Abazigal spat; Della was on the ground with her hands upon her hair, brushing sand away from brown ribbons, blue eyes wide. "Weaker vessel for Bhaal's blood! Before I slay you: _how did you murder my son_?"

Della's mouth opened and closed; she said nothing.

"We didn't!" Imoen managed, a weak retort; "We've done nothing to you!"

"Weak human," he spat—he must have known that Imoen too was one of his kind, Khalid thought, by the envenomed glare of his eyes flashing yellow; he and Jaheira slowly pulled themselves beyond the buffet of the wings, forcing a combat stance. The more there was talking, the more they could get into positions— There would be no chance to run.

"We are not assassins," his wife spat, fierce Jaheira, and he felt the same: they killed only when they must in battle. It did not stop that Bhaalspawn saw fit to slay other Bhaalspawn, that only one would remain as the contender to the Throne... But Della and Imoen were not like that.

"Not assassins? Your pitiful denials are nothing! You slew my son by poison in the dead of night—" Della might have been preparing for a spell, or she might have been simply ensuring her hair was away from her face; she pulled upon a brown ribbon at her ear.

Safana, Khalid thought. He could see Safana no more; an invisibility potion amidst the sands flowing about them, most likely. She was getting into position, and he and Jaheira signalled to each other for their strategies. No matter how hopeless this fight seemed.

"You disgusting, half-_human_ Spawn," Abazigal raged, the breath from him hot and stinking. Della said nothing. Khalid still waited for Safana; and he whispered one single word to Jaheira, who nodded. "No word to me? One breath from me will destroy you, twig!"

Della nodded, and said: "I didn't." But she pulled on a brown ribbon again, and as she did so it seemed a shard of ornament embedded in it caught the sun's light. A brown, _scalelike_ piece, Khalid thought; but surely it could _not_ be...

Abazigal screamed his roar. Jaheira, who had heard Khalid's single word, stepped forward with a living shield over her hands. A blue dragon was lightning. Simple wood halted it.

"Darling, she really didn't," Khalid heard Safana say, her scarred hoarseness regaining something of its older sleek satisfaction, laying in wait behind the tendons of the dragon's folded wings. "This weak human did." Her blades flashed; there was suddenly blood flowing from Abazigal's wings and Jaheira started to call a decay upon him. Safana somersaulted down and away from the dragon, her blades flashing white in her hands: they seemed as teeth with rough brown hilts rather than her usual swords... The dragon snapped for her, enraged; she fled from it.

"Weight the wings!" Khalid shouted to Garrick. The strength of a bard's songs was in their versatility. Garrick, who had last stood for Della before a scorpion's stinger, sang: low and heavy, seeking to finish Safana's task and to bind the dragon to the earth. Jaheira flung the wooden shield she had crafted to Khalid, and grew another for herself. Her skin was bark and she sprouted more from her form even as she chanted renewed spells; he could only wonder at her great abilities... And to try his best.

"_A heavy weight of hours holds! Be chained and bowed! It falls upon even those tameless swift and proud!_" Garrick cried. Abazigal roared, and yet the bard's spell seemed to hold—or Safana's damage to the right wing. Abazigal stepped forward, shaking the earth by his weight, but did not rise; and Khalid went to him. The lightning flashed in Della's direction, but Khalid raised his wooden shield in time: though he wore metal behind it, it was thick enough to insulate against the force—

Jaheira touched him on his shoulder, and he felt his armour transform itself. Thick oak that seemed to grow with him; against Firkragg it would perish but against this it protected bare skin. He saw Jaheira smile, and he went forward with his day's blade. The scales in the stomach; he drove Daystar forward. Abazigal's head and its fangs bent down. He moved—the light armour aided, the shield ready. The wings shifted though the dragon did not rise, and a mighty wind blew again. The song continued, though Della and Imoen shouted to lose balance and spells. Khalid looked at the ocean of glittering scale before him, the dragon's heart surely at a space three of him standing atop each other would have struggled to reach. Daystar weakened the scales at least, and he struck carefully where he had before. If none were better for this task, let it be him to take on the dragon.

A throwing dagger thrummed into the hide above his head. Safana, a considerable distance back, held another readied in her hands and threw again. There was a liquid on them that Khalid had seen in Sendai's lair, the green-black poison that the drow had favoured; stolen... That was a matter for after the battle, if they yet lived. Abazigal moved too quickly, thundering forward, Khalid almost slipping behind his feet and below his bulk. Too large, too powerful; but he had to protect. One more of Safana's daggers slammed into its hide.

Jaheira's third chant had brought another invocation of decay on Abazigal. Some of the scales were slightly bruised, slightly apart; there was a space behind the right foot that Khalid saw, slicing his blade near enough to a tendon. Abazigal roared and kicked, and he felt himself caught by the claws scraping across his armour. He was bruised, likely a rib broken; but Jaheira's oakwood grew back around him, protecting from the lightning storm that slammed into him as well as all of them. Della and Imoen stood smelling of burned hair, but they glowed with the blue of protections; and Garrick sung yet, hidden behind the shelter of charred hobgoblins. Imoen reached for another summoning.

_A blue dragon._ Khalid had known the trick of insulation; knew the trick of weighing down the wings; of finding the gaps between the scales. No choice but to fight it. Abazigal began to cast himself, his voice roaring; Khalid feared the spell, and then the pain burst around them. It was as if they were made of glass, and were shattered; he bled, the bard's song behind them faltering, even Jaheira crying out— He fell and moved away from the vast blue foot. _Khalid, dear, I'd not want to say that you died from being stepped upon._ (There were replies to that some would think were witty but with which he would greatly disagree.)

Hobgoblins went forward to aid him. Summons; and then Imoen raised her voice high and called down breath like Firkragg's, fire that only scorched the dragon and left the rest of them cool and refreshed. Jaheira spoke to the desert and it must have replied to her. Wild creatures from it came to her call, basilisks whose eyes looked only at the dragon before them, and even though they did not turn Abazigal to stone they harmed him by their attacks. Snakes swarmed up and bit around the scales, seeking the small spaces of flesh below, rising over Safana's throwing daggers and sinking teeth to where poison had already started to bite. Small tides of scorpions and centipedes seethed from the desert sand, crawling up and between Abazigal's scales in a way that seemed to only enrage it.

"Druid," the dragon roared, "are you the reason for the weakling's successes?"

_No._ Abazigal cast a spell and it was the wail of a banshee, a white womanlike thing whirling about Jaheira that made her cry out, the screaming a pure torment. She could heal herself, he hoped—but this he could never allow—

Safana's daggers rose up Abazigal's chest, and Khalid called to her and asked for what he wanted. Abazigal tried to cast again, and he could shatter them all no matter what they did against him. Safana's daggers became a ladder, and Khalid laid down his shield and climbed the moving wyrm.

There was little leverage here. Abazigal moved; the daggers were pinpricks, but Sendai's poison coated their blades. Daystar was in its sheath; Khalid flung feet and arms in an ungraceful climb, below the dragon's head that still dared to glare at his wife, at the children. He could never let this happen.

He was high above the ground now; as if he swayed from a rooftop in the midst of an earthquake, the desert sands startlingly below him. To Abazigal he was a fly. Khalid swung from a dagger with his left hand, and with Daystar's hilt slick in his hand aimed his right between the dragon's scales. At where he knew the heart must be, from Firkraag. The magic more than his strength thrust through the gap, and Abazigal shook and roared, at last realising the trick. Dragon's blood fell, and Khalid felt it burn hands and flesh; he sought the daggers as handhold, foothold, and he could push the sword further in.

Imoen cast; Khalid knew it to be one for vulnerability to poison, that Safana's daggers would stop Abazigal's beat in time. The singing had stopped in some of the dragon's thrashing. Khalid saw the wings unfurl; he had thrust his full arm in now, and then his shoulder. Something large beat near to him and the blood ate flesh. A dagger thrummed next to his head, and for a moment he wondered if another enemy before realising Safana. It was over one way or another; of course his last thoughts would be _Jaheira—_

It was still not too long after noon when he opened his eyes again to hear a thread of harpsong, and lifted a brown and fully fleshed arm to see Jaheira staring down at him. Her face was Eldath's gentleness, Lliira's joy, Mielikki's sweetness, Mystra's wisdom, Selune's bright eyes, Shiallia's beauty, Tymora's abundance, the goddesses of the Harp; it simplified into one woman at last.

"I do _not_ wish to fix you from that damage again, Khalid! 'Tis a mercy you did not land on your foolish head! I thought I must call you back by pin—" The faint thread echoed both from his arm and hers, the Harper symbols gifted by one who laid claim to the name Terminsel.

_Those who Harp, my call heed; those who Harp, my plea hear..._

_Calls yet to come, my Harper; in labours long have no fear..._

"Killing a dragon by yourself. When I saw the—the creature explode to dust and you falling to the very sands, Khalid, mark my words if you die I will never let you hear the end of it!" Golden sun glinted on Jaheira's tawny hair, the colour of the desert lands where they met the grass. Her green eyes were narrowed into baleful slits, and her face was coated in dust and drying blood. She was no less a perfect vision for it.

"There is...very l-little we can fear now, is there?" he said.

He slowly reached up for her shoulders, and kissed her once. Sweeter than the desert.

And yet they must go on. Jaheira aided him with his armour, helping him crudely twist it back to shape and to fit the enchanted steel around himself, changed back from its wooden form. Were it not so light he could never have borne it through this place.

"Now, Della, Safana," his wife said, and the tone of her voice was no longer of affection, "_did_ you murder Draconis?"

Della scuffed a copper-tipped boot that was nonetheless quite dainty in the sands. "Melissan explained that Draconis liked human form," she said. "And it was better that we killed him because he could have scried for us in the desert, because he's a mage. And Safana told me she stole poison from Sendai's lair. So I asked her to do it and made her invisible and she went in and killed him while he slept and I waited. He turned back into a dragon and we got his scales and his teeth that she used to cut through Abazigal. There. I'm not nice." Garrick stood by her, pale-faced, though his arm did not leave her shoulders. "I made Sarevok vow and I locked him up in the plane too. Though I left him some books to read," she added. "I wanted a—a n-normal life and pretty dresses and nice boys who liked me back. I can't help wanting to kill people!" She sniffled, her nose and eyes reddened by sand and her rosebud mouth set in an ugly twist.

"Delythabelle Greymantle!" He couldn't help but be disappointed. Khalid stared at Della, and she hung her head. "Gorion would _n-never_..."

"Don't blame her too much," Safana said, and flung back her head defiantly. "You see, my skills have their uses, my _helw_." My sweet; she meant it in irony, of course.

"_Bhaalspawn_," Imoen said, using the word like a curse. "What do you think you were—"

"In the end we all live," Khalid said. "Delythabelle, you will not do something like that in future without c-consulting us, no?" She gave a sober nod. "We may take the matter at a later time."

With Jaheira, when they rested again with Amkethran upon the far horizon, he spoke again:

"Yes; 'tis evil. B-but Della is not," Khalid said simply. The moon above them was a pale eye searching the earth below; they sat on watch by the dying embers of a fire, for the desert was cold by darkness.

"My...doubts, Khalid. That we failed with them..." Jaheira irritably poked at the fire with a stick. "A child and a dilettante who turns assassin! And it is the latter who lacks even the ethical compass of Imoen."

"We...had to fight the dragons sooner or later," Khalid said. "Perhaps... Perhaps it is possible to forgive."

"Bhaal himself was an assassin." Jaheira stopped her motion, and abruptly folded her arms.

"D-Della is not crueller than Abazigal, or any of them." How to explain his thoughts, and to listen to her wisdom? "She w-wants...She l-loves her bard. She w-wishes to please."

"To the point where she runs away if it does not suit her whim," Jaheira said.

"T-to the point where she is willing to...to s-save children in slavery," Khalid said. In the Copper Coronet, Della had aided greatly with that; had conjured illusions of unicorns and flowers out of thin air to help to lead the children from that hell-hole, taking them with her clinging to her clean robes and for once not complaining of the dirt but instead encouraging them to follow. He could not countenance what she had done by night; and yet she was Gorion's daughter.

"After 'twas us who dragged her there to aid her in Imoen's rescue," Jaheira said, sighing. "As we have al... Come, Khalid. Perhaps the only thing I can be truly sure of is that I find the sight of you desirable and the night cold. If I have sufficiently healed you, of course."

—

_Note:_ Garrick's poetry altered from Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.


	6. Government

**Chapter 6: Government**

—

"There will be an end to the Bhaalspawn crisis." _A strong man_, Jaheira thought. She respected those with devotion to ideals; nature ought to be highest, for what were people without nature, but as a Harper as well she sought a balance for all that lived. The monk's belief was not dissimilar. And yet by factual circumstance Imoen lay unconscious on the ground, her breath slowly rising and falling; Garrick and Safana were guarded by a ring of twelve monks; and herself and Khalid stood with Balthazar. As if as a triune they passed judgment upon Della: two Harpers and the large monk between them. He reminded her of Sarevok Anchev by build, by the gold that lurked in his dark eyes, Jaheira thought; shaved bald except for a narrow ring of brown hair, his skin tanned by the desert heat to much the same shade as Khalid's skin below her husband's thick red-copper head of hair.

"But I don't want to die," Delythabelle answered him. It was a child's protest. _Gorion, do I _have_ to go to bed? I want Uncle Khalid to show more pretty things..._ Jaheira doubted Della remembered that very first meeting, briefly speaking to their old friend Gorion and talking to a petted four-year-old in a much beribboned nightdress. She sometimes lost patience with children who failed to listen, but Khalid's patience was inexhaustible and his gentleness endless with young ones; and they loved him in return. Or perhaps those words from Della harked back to the two young girls encrusted with dirt and blood, stumbling over each other to flee the assassin of the Friendly Arm. _But I don't want them to kill me. Please help us, Jaheira? But I don't see why we have to go down some...some dirty old mine, Jaheira, couldn't we do something different?_ It was not her fault that Delythabelle carried the taint; it was not the fault of the innocents slain in her wake either.

"The taint will be gone forever," Balthazar said. "We three are last. After you, then me; and then the land will be free from Bhaal forever. I do not appeal to your nobility for I know you lack it, but to that of your companions. Let us end the bloodshed. I promise that it will be without pain."

Khalid was watching her, his eyes wide, and Jaheira longed to go to him and give the reassurance that he wished.

"How much have you endured from the blood?" Balthazar went on in that voice. Della's cheeks paled; many unpleasant memories, no doubt. "You must dream of blood. I dream of blood. You must know the monster within. I know of the monster within."

Delythabelle spoke slowly. "I...found bits of Bodhi under my nails when I turned," she said. "She stole..." She looked to Garrick, her blue eyes wide. Were her Khalid taken from her in such a manner, Jaheira thought, she would have found fury enough to rend the very city of Athkatla to its seams; she had aided Della to retrieve her lover from the partial transformation. "What Irenicus did to us. Hurt Alora. How he stole Imoen. Coran. Daddy... My father Gorion," Della said more formally. "This has been nothing but pain."And yet in the end Della and Imoen wished to react rather than to act in advance to prevent pain, would have busied themselves with trivia and petty theft and investigating how many pink goblins singing out-of-tune love poetry one could summon to annoy a druid in one day rather than the duty that defined a Harper.

"I offer a painless end to this evil," Balthazar said. His voice reminded Jaheira vaguely of Dermin, though it was a painful memory: the same sense of calm authority and honour in what he chose to do. She would have placed the human's age as at least double Della's, though it was impossible to accurately tell from his inscrutable expression. His movements were careful, one who had long trained in his fighting arts.

Della hesitated. "Without pain," she repeated, and Balthazar took up the gap she left in their conversation.

"A technique known as the Twin Four-Point Stars," the monk said, straight-backed and still, his orange robes austere though cleanly folded. "It is called so because three fingers and thumb are spread, like this." Slowly he raised a hand as if he sought to mesmerise; despite herself Jaheira found herself watching. The motions reminded her of the slow turnings of the hannawill snake to mesmerise the field mice it ate as pests. "The first strike is to the back of the neck, aimed carefully at a cluster of nerves in the spinal column. This unerringly paralyses the body and gives the mind unconsciousness before one even feels the impact of the fingertips. It took me seven years of my life to develop, and I have taught it to each of my monks." The faces of the yellow-robed acolytes about him were almost as impassive as Balthazar's own. Jaheira continued to listen; she signalled to Khalid to allow him to continue to talk, for Della also listened. In contrast to the composure of Balthazar, she trembled. "The second strike is then to the back of the head itself, while the body is falling. The fingers are moved to this position, to stretch widely about the head. Naturally it does not work on larger humanoids such as ogres, but for humanoid or smaller Bhaalspawn." Balthazar's hand, Jaheira noticed, was wide in span and the fingers thick, slightly larger than Delythabelle's head. "It exploits certain weaknesses of the skull," he said. "You will perhaps not wish to know of the details of it, but it is an instantaneous kill. What it pierces first is the brain's pleasure centre, so you will not wake to feel pain, even were you not paralysed by the first blow. It is a more merciful death than that of most other victims of our shared taint; and a more merciful death than I shall have, for I must trust only my resolve rather than risk the lives of my brothers in my death."

Faith, Jaheira thought that she could see in the eyes of the monks who followed Balthazar. Whatever else this Bhaalspawn was, he had won the loyalty of these, though not the citizens of Amkethran itself. But one did deeds not for the sake of common recognition.

In truth, despite her condemnation of assassination there were more deeds in the dark that Jaheira was willing to do for the greater balance than Khalid; but she was not willing to disappoint him.

"What of Imoen?" Della said, looking to her sister. "I have been told...she only has a small amount, and it's concealed. She..."

"Would feel the same as you, no doubt," Balthazar said. "The thing of true import is to end this taint. How many girls who are truly innocent will suffer? What does Imoen feel about witnessing the pain of others?"

Delythabelle hesitated; Jaheira saw her cheeks redden. "Imoen cares more than me," she said limply, hanging her head. "Imoen wanted to help people first, even if we did both want to have fun. And we had some fun," she added, almost defiantly, watching Balthazar. "What do you monks think of fun?"

Perhaps a ghost of a smile lingered upon Balthazar's lips. "When I was a boy there was fun," he said, "and then by accident I killed another boy in a fit of temper. He was a bully of those weaker; but it was still a betrayal of my discipline. My master was tolerant, my master understood that I was tainted; my master set my feet upon this path. I am redeemed from a murderer's life. Since then I have striven to do nothing but control the taint. Meditation and discipline are _fun_," he said, and his expression returned to its serene fanaticism. "I consider fighting against the Spawn's ability to murder far more important than trivial enjoyments. Do you?"

_No, Della did not_, Jaheira thought; and then felt half ashamed of it. And nonetheless it was true that Della had not merely done the trivial, she had actively done wrong at times. The training of a Harper had taught both Jaheira and Khalid both the techniques of seeing when another spoke falsehood; she could detect nothing but sincerity from Balthazar, and nor had Khalid, for he had not signalled to her.

A shamed red was in Della's cheeks; she shook her head. "Not always," she said.

"There is no other way to end this," Balthazar said. "You are not as _destructive_ as the other Spawn; and I have respect for Harpers." He have a nod to both Jaheira and Khalid. "You are accountable more for weakness than malice by reputation, Delythabelle," he said, and that was precisely it, Jaheira thought. That she herself was impatient with what seemed to her deliberate inadequacies, perhaps almost as lacking in tolerance for it as she was for the greater evils of slavers and warmongers. She felt the presence of her husband near to her. "Accept that I have the strength to conclude these wars; that your Harper friends will surely stand surety," Balthazar finished.

Khalid stiffened, and Jaheira petitioned him to say nothing by a touch. She could feel his eyes upon her.

"It sounds from the prophecies that it ends...that it ends if the Spawn does," Della said, her high voice uncertain and trembling in contrast to Balthazar's strong certainty. "I've read them...bits of them. It's not that I can't understand them..."

"_Della_!" Garrick shrieked; she looked to him, and turned back to Balthazar's stone face.

"Jaheira, Khalid," Delythabelle said. "I'm sorry I ran away from you in Beregost in the beginning, even if it meant that I got to have more time alone with Garrick. But I want to ask you to help me again. Because I still want to live."

The silver patterns of a shadow door appeared from Della's fingertips; the instant later she reappeared above Imoen and took her too, the moment before one of Balthazar's acolytes moved to slay her. It was the same instrument Della must have used to disappear with Safana upon that night, to slay the brown dragon whose scales she wore in her hair— Della had not mastered no magic across all they had been forced to do, Jaheira thought grimly. Safana broke through the line of monks by desperation more than her skill; Garrick plucked an eyelash from himself and bent it to disappear.

"She cannot escape this place by her magics," Balthazar said, his eyes searching for the signs of mage's invisibility. "Harpers: I have no quarrel with the goals of your organisation."

Then Jaheira acted. She pushed her staff forward in a pattern she called her own Single-Point Collapse Of Opponent, a certain one she had first used forty-three or so years ago while playing with a fellow druid-trained youth. For a moment Balthazar reeled back; Jaheira called her water elemental, and called it to take residence in Balthazar's own lungs. It was not as quick a battle as she would have hoped, and she would have preferred that she and Khalid had been able to cause more of Balthazar's acolytes to surrender; but they stood in the monastery, a score or so of monks waiting in surrender, guarded by five desert lynxes she had called. Delythabelle, hair-ribbons tattered and robes muddied, stood by her with Imoen.

"Neither Khalid nor I _would_ stand by," Jaheira told the girl. So many more things she could have said: _You do not deserve to die, Della. Not for what you have not done; not for what you have done. We swore to protect you but we will continue for more than that, Della. We took this adventure on and we will follow it to the very end, Della, Imoen, Garrick, Safana, beloved..._

Della fiddled with her hair. "I can feel...something strange."

—


	7. Choice

**Chapter 7: Choice**

—

Khalid's limbs were lead, crushed. He saw the priestess, the Deathstalker. The green column of light behind her was bright enough to hurt any who looked on it. It felt the end of all things. As the elf he and Jaheira had once met in Nashkel mines would have said: likely it was.

Yet while there was life there had to be some hope. His plate was twisted into his body, crushed over his flesh; but Jaheira was beside him. Two nymphs and a dryad were by her, in great harm themselves because of the summoning. She wept even as Melissan's fiends had destroyed them. Nature sacrificed in the name of stopping the would-be goddess...

Garrick stood frozen in place not far from him. Khalid couldn't see Safana, who had been fighting a fiendish knight, her acrobatics likely small defence against a thing of its powers. Imoen bent over clutching her stomach, her skin grey stone but shredded by the claws of a glabrezu; and Della stood behind him, burned badly and yet chanting something, here at the last. Her voice was unsteady; but she repaid his and Jaheira's efforts by trying, as Imoen also sought to save lives and souls. Amelyssan the betrayer. He'd been so blind.

He and Jaheira went forth for a last desperate attempt. He could not muster finesse to his limbs; and without that he was of little use, for he was not so strong as gifted humans, not nearly so strong as his wife when she called on the powers natural to her. But his shield hand was intact, and he would protect her against all he could, while she fought. There was no need for them to exchange words; they knew already what they would have said to each other at the last. Harper, druid, warrior, _Jaheira and Khalid_, here at the end they were nothing but themselves, souls doing battle in a plane of the divine. Amelyssan in the shape of the Ravager grew limbs, grew to a giant; and Khalid and Jaheira went to fight.

What Delythabelle cast was a simple illusion. That there was a Jaheira; that there was a Khalid; that the Throne was one foot to the left-hand side. The avatar struck, and Khalid saw it miss him by several feet; so it gave Jaheira time to press the last of her fire seeds into its leg, gave Khalid the chance to sink his sword below what might have been the limbs of the creature. Then of course it threw them from it, one blow against both. Khalid felt himself airborne. Then it reached to drain again from the Throne, failing by the tips of its elongated claws to touch it; and Della's second contingency of Shadow Door activated before him. Khalid was flying down toward the creature once more, hardly a chance to adjust his motion, Jaheira behind him.

He saw the Ravager's eye, and thrust Daystar to it. Jaheira grasped to the monster and would not let go, all the desperate strength of the bear defending nature and mate against those last flailings of the terrible priestess...

There was a red-haired woman upon her knees, and a solar so bright it hurt to look, her skin the blue of ice against a sun impossible to imagine, her hair yellow like the stars of other planes. He held the arm of Jaheira by his side, and she his. _The end of everything_ repeated itself in his mind.

"It is not over until I say so! I am a goddess—"

"You are not," the solar said, and the red-haired woman was silent. "It is time to accept your fate."

It was time only to watch the children make their choice. One of mortality, available to them, or it could be that pink Imoen or beribboned Della would stand as a human deity...

"Where would we be without them?" Khalid said, his stutter missing in these planes; and Jaheira stared at him.

"Not in the planes, perhaps; not in the hells; and yet I do not know what would have become of us had Della been born with common sense..." Jaheira said. If Della had stayed with them on all their quest against the Iron Throne and learned more from them; if they had been present to try to save her from the wizard the first time... Who knew what could have happened were different chances accepted. His wife gripped his arm fiercely, as if frightened to lose him.

No; one could never know the direction of the fates. The cure for that was only patience, Khalid thought wryly. He was very tired. It would be good to close his eyes for a long time, Jaheira next to him, in a soft and welcoming darkness.

Jaheira seemed to pinch him. "Don't consider it, Khalid," she said. "Stay with me."

They witnessed. "'Course I don't want it," they heard Imoen say, "take it. Yer welcome." She was smiling, her face more full of childish glee than Khalid had seen from Imoen for a long time. She transmuted her wizard's robes to a pink candy-like shade, and danced to herself; farther away Garrick also watched.

Della spoke to the solar, nodding and shaking her head, placing a hand to her forehead and to her hair in intermittent confusion. She turned back to them, alight with power:

"You're going to go back," she said, "safe to Faerun. Jaheira, about Safana—use your Harper's Call on her!" A pair of tears crept down Della's cheeks, sparkling green in the odd light of this plane. "I know she's not a Harper, but she's...balanced, and maybe she needs something she has to do. The solar says that it will work for you if you try. When you fetch her back, you have to tell her that Coran's in Brightwater sometimes, and that Lady Luck's fond of her and would be fonder if she prayed once in a while."

_Safana_, Khalid thought in sorrow; but in a dizzying hurry the planes were fading away like fragments of a puzzle, flat earth growing under their feet, a tangled confusion of transformation. His body jerked as they came to a stop in the world where up and down were in only two directions, where he could see and understand a green forest around them. He and Jaheira were in good health, suddenly well once more; joy lingered on Imoen's face; Garrick sat alone, and Safana lay still with her neck twisted to an impossible position. Jaheira bent over her, making the chant. Lady Luck: _Sayida Sa'adat_ in his and Safana's tongue. Tymora aid her.

"Get up," Jaheira was telling her, going so far as to slap her face, "Just because I have despised piracy for what it is and your attitude and your ways does not mean I wish you to die like this; you will return and repay the Harpers for this call, or _else_..."

Khalid would have done his best to heed that tone of voice of his wife. Jaheira continued to work on Safana, straightening her bones, healing her flesh first, concentrating on the chant; such things needed to be accomplished quickly or else all in a person was lost. Safana bint Hasib al-Karim al-Rahman, Safana bint Jaaffier al-Rashid al-Calimport, Safana daughter of pasha Hasib the generous servant of merciful Ao, Safana daughter of vizier Jaaffier the rightly-guided of Calimport; whatever her birth name had once been; pirate and rogue and companion who had remained beside Della and Imoen for all this time.

Safana opened her eyes, and shook out her damp hair like a sandcat. "Darling, the planes are so tedious," she purred. "Thanks ever so much." Khalid was by his wife, and took hold of her as soon as the penalty came to her body for using the Call upon one who had not taken Harper's oaths; Jaheira laid hands on herself and chanted the spells to once more heal. Safana idly sipped at—what would be wine, Khalid supposed from the smell, and raised the vial high in the air.

"A drink for all!" she offered. "That that capricious bitch Lady Death doesn't have us! To Sayida Sa'adat," she added more softly, and drew another long mouthful. It was a spiced red made from a good vineyard, Khalid thought, drinking after Jaheira; and did not ask where Safana would have obtained it. Some cellar of some city they had passed through.

"Or for _Della_," Garrick said, his head slumped over his knees. "She's up there."

"Honestly, that girl will be a disaster as a goddess," Jaheira said. Moments before, Khalid had felt they would all be gone; he could not help but grin foolishly at her words so...characteristic of her, so much his wife's sense of what was right and proper and how to ensure others behaved so. "Twittering everywhere! No sense of proportion! Ribbons in place of a brain! Vain chicklet! Affected little piece! Feckless flibbertigibbet!"

A delicate and ladylike cough came from behind her. Della put one foot forward, and stumbled across a stray twig on the ground; Garrick was already beside her to support her. Their Della, Gorion's Della: a small delicate-featured half-elf, her hair burned and unevenly sheared to shoulder's height, though blue ribbons still wove through it; her face healed of wounds and her eyes bright and sparkling; her smile the equal of Imoen's for happiness.

"You were right, Jaheira," Imoen said, hastening to her sister; "She would've been a terrible goddess. _Dell_!"

The forest they were in was Larswood, Khalid realised: a place not far from where it had all begun. Oak and ash and willow stretched far into the blue curtains of the sky, bound by trailing vines that drew life from their support. He could smell the fresh water of the nearby lake. Wild roses grew over a bush in a profusion of red, white-flowered western clovers underfoot.

"And I don't know if it's going to be a happy ever after, but we'll try," Della said, her head resting on Garrick's shoulder. "Imoen's going to move into Ramazith's tower if it's still available, and Safana's going to travel more. It's not much but I want to be normal, and Garrick's going to write songs and we're going to live..." Her eyes dipped down at the ground for a moment. "And I...ran out of those herbs a month ago, Jaheira."

"Della!" Jaheira said, scolding once more, drawing in breath like a mother bird about to reprimand offspring; "Child. We will _talk_..."

The tones of Jaheira's voice were easy to hear above the wind in the trees on the other side of the Larswood grove. Khalid rested his back against a reassuringly solid oak the age of at least eight lifetimes, and placed his weapons by his side. _Habibat_, he thought, _come to me_.

—

_The cure for fate is patience_ - Arabic proverb.

_the end - thank you for reading!_


End file.
